Photo: Michael Macor / The Chronicle

The story juices me because Butters Canyon was my home for some years, and I founded this land trust in 2001. I never set out to work in land conservation. It’s just that I got radicalized by a little urban creek flowing far below my kitchen window.

My partner and I bought the hillside house during the rainy El Niño winter of 1997–98, and Peralta Creek was a roaring presence outside the house during the first months we lived there. For years I walked this stretch of Butters Drive with my dog, Sapphire, soaking in the peace of spreading bay trees and the seasonal trickle of water nestled in a crevice of tangled green.

But in 1998 when I moved in, the base of the canyon was a mess. Peering over the edge of the street, you could see a mattress or two, some tires lodged in the dirt, and more pieces of old machinery than you could count. So with the help of the city’s hauling service, the neighbors and I organized a creek cleanup. I’d never been part of one and had no idea if people were interested in stumbling up and down fifty feet of steep, poison oak–strewn canyon hillside to haul trash out of a creekbed.

But that foggy September morning, around fifty people showed up, and over the course of the day we wrested out stoves, bed springs, enough rusty furnishings to fill an apartment. You can still see photos from the first creek cleanup on the land trust’s website. The ones who stuck around for pizza and sunshine gathered for a group photo that afternoon. That’s me in the red shirt holding my small next-door neighbor:

The following spring, when a parcel in the canyon came up for sale, the logical next step was a land trust. Not that I knew anything about land trusts or had ever worked in real estate. But there are books and people to ask for advice, and with their help I filed the papers and called a few people together as a board. We wrote up our strategic plan, started fund-raising . . . and a decade later the land trust completes this stage of its mission.

I moved out of the neighborhood long ago so have not been part of the workings of the land trust for most of its life. But I took this lesson with me: Never underestimate the power of a creek to change your thinking, and your life.

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Radicalized by a creek

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Recently, during some way-too-busy weeks of an overwhelming workload and too many unknowns looming, I slipped away one sunny morning to the Boulder reservoir, hoping to see eagles. Bald eagles begin nesting here in February, and although the reservoir this year was still capped with a solid lid of ice, I hoped perhaps the eagles would perch nearby even if they would not likely find a decent breakfast between its shores.

I parked near the reservoir and began hiking. The lake was blinding white. No dark hulks loomed in the cottonwoods along the shore. I remembered again how much fun it is to bird in winter when the trees have no leaves and the great perching birds may be visible for nearly a mile. Enjoying the bright sun and clear blue sky—we’ve had less than usual of it in recent weeks—I kept walking, periodically scanning the trees with binoculars.

A half mile or so into the hike I saw what might be a dark spot in a faraway cottonwood. Double-checking through the glasses, I saw a dark shape with a white head and a white tail. And yowze! A second one perched in the same tree!

I drew closer. Okay, I had to cross a fence or two and trespass into a muddy cattle pasture, but I ended up about thirty yards away from the tree. I sank down carefully between cow pies.

The sun warmed my back; the sky was open and blue. My cell phone was off; no one could interrupt me here. I sat with the eagles, appreciating.

After some minutes the one on the right lifted off and drifted lazily toward a cottonwood farther away. The other, consenting to my presence, remained in place. We watched—the eagle training sharp eyes on prairie dogs, trespassing human, and faraway cattle, and me gazing back wide-eyed through binoculars. I memorized each detail of riffing feather, golden claw, and blazing eye.

After about twenty minutes this eagle too shifted from foot to foot, flexed its wings, spread them wide, and stepped into air.

I sat for a few more minutes, smiling. Then I got up, stretched, and retraced my steps to the car. I was breathing more deeply. The sky seemed even bluer, the morning more graced.

I have my own collective noun to add to the centuries-old list: a “peace of eagles.”

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

A peace of eagles

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from bbonline.com

The bluff sits next to the beautiful White River, named “white” because it was so clear you could see right down to the riverbed. Here it is near sunset during our visit:

What a birders’ paradise the area is! The first surprise was cardinals. I’d grown up with them near Lake Erie but didn’t become a birder until I lived on the West Coast, so I’d never peered at them through binoculars. The males’ bright orange-red plumage is an antidote to winter! One of these days I’ll get the camera to begin photographing birds. For now, in the spirit of the Great Backyard Bird Count, which was taking place while I visited Arkansas, here are the birds I saw in a few minutes of watching through the cabin window:

• 4 cardinals (3 male, 1 female)
• 5 juncos (Oregon)
• 3 yellow-rumped warblers
• 1 Carolina wren (my first ever!—such a vivid rust-brown on top, with a buffy breast and bright eye stripe)

And finally, the final morning we were there, the bird I’d been expecting, the fish-eating, riverside-nesting prize of them all—a bald eagle! As we watched from the cabin deck it circled over the river, perched near the tip of a pine tree for some minutes, then lifted off and soared away again over the river.

The foggy, chilly weather didn’t invite much outdoor exploring, but one morning I hiked along the road and was intrigued by the land. First, a minibluff next to the road, with icicles:

Some native grapevines, twirling through pine branches:

The mixture of conifers and deciduous trees and the gently rolling land reminded me a lot of the foothills of the Sierras near Grass Valley, California, where I lived a few years ago. Here were grasses, rocks and trees beside the Arkansas road:

I’m always surprised how lovely the slumbering winter land looks when you get to know it up close.

Finally, lichen-covered rocks, a mainstay of the region. Much of the area is covered by these surface rocks, complete with a few of what, if I were on a coast, I’d call tide pools. But these are filled of course with freshwater trickling its way down to the White River and then to the Mississippi and the gulf. I suspect these rock pools harbor some wonderful critter life in spring and summer:

A surprise horticulture lesson awaited us at the home of one of the family members. An avid gardener, our host began tossing out homegrown loofah sponges as gifts to the guests. Where do loofah sponges come from? The loofah gourd of course! I had no idea. He plants them in the spring in fresh soil, and over the summer they climb up the fence. Through the fall and winter they dry on the vine, and he picks them in midwinter.

Here is a gourd picked a couple of weeks ago:

Once the gourd is picked, he strips off the leathery skin. What is left is the recognizable loofah filled with its black, squashlike seeds in three chambers. Some shaking of the loofah and digging around with an old toothbrush loosens the seeds, after which he bleaches the sponge for fifteen minutes.

Then, it’s ready for the shower or the kitchen sink. Soft and pleasantly scratchy, it feels good on the skin or gently scrubs vegetables or pots and pans.

Note on the northern Arkansas growing season: Last chance of frost is April 15, and the loofah gourd seedlings hit the outdoors at that point. The plant likes tropical and subtropical climates. And the fruit, when small, is good to eat and is often used in Asian cuisine.

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Beside the White River

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In other words, taking and giving in equal measure is the only sustainable practice in human relationships, whether interpersonal or international.

But then I’ve been thinking about how reciprocity is key in our relationship with the Earth too. At bottom, our ecological crisis boils down to one simple fact: humans are taking more than we’re giving back to the Earth.

For instance, we take oil out of the rock, and instead of making something of it that nourishes other life forms or enriches the soil, we make things out of it—plastic, CO2-releasing fuels, fertilizers, pesticides—that over their lifespan take more out of the soil or water or air than they contribute.

How did the Earth survive for billions of years and prepare an atmosphere conducive to life? By every species giving as good as it gets. By a system of exchange in which every part of the whole contributes as much as it uses. One species’s waste is another species’s fuel.

Who gets it?

• Plants: They take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.
• Animals: Just the opposite. They take in oxygen and produce CO2.
• Ecologists: They always think in terms of the whole ecosystem—how each part contributes and uses resources in balance with all the others.
• Indigenous peoples: They’ve been teaching their children for millennia that reciprocity with the earth is the bottom line for survival.
• Real estate agents: They know that a good deal is one in which the buyer and seller both go away happy. And that the only fair trade is an equal trade.
• Religious folks: They developed the Golden Rule in all its forms. Receiving as much as we give—it’s how everyone wants to be treated.
• Adam Smith: Yes, the father of capitalism himself talked about responsibilities as well as rights—something his economic progeny forgot in the nineteenth century when they permanently severed economics from ethics.

Who doesn’t get it?

• Plastics manufacturers and users: That’s us—every one of us. We’re putting into circulation a product whose end-of-life does not fuel some other life form but instead endangers the soil, the oceans, and all kinds of animals.
• Banks that shell out astronomical bonuses: They’re unsustainable because not based on reciprocity—unless you want to argue that bank execs are contributing a value in either goods or services equal to their bonus. And I can’t think of anyone who does. In fact, in a time of recession when labor is plentiful, wages (according to the law of labor supply and demand) should go down. Something’s definitely fishy here.
• Those who deal in natural resource extraction: Because the value of a healthy, functioning ecosystem is beyond measuring, any treaty or trade that places a number value on natural resources is by definition not reciprocal and therefore not in the long run sustainable. Think clear-cut logging, mining, and just about every trade agreement between industrialized and developing nations.
• Coal-mining companies that blast the tops off mountains AND the people who rely on the energy they produce: Again, all of us. Destroying ecosystems is the definition of unsustainable, rooted in a lack of reciprocity both with the people who live near those mountains and more generally between humans and the earth.
• Buyers of nonorganic food: Guilty here. Fossil-fuel-intensive agriculture is the epitome of nonreciprocal relations with the earth—and is therefore unsustainable.

It looks to me like humans are the only species capable of such radically nonreciprocal relations. We’re the only ones who can forget so spectacularly that we have to give in equal measure with getting.

Which is why our systems of education, religion, ethics, business—you name it—in this time of ecological and economic crisis must turn toward helping humans remember reciprocity.

Reciprocity—it’s the only sustainable practice. In ecology, in trade, in friendship. Reciprocity is the meeting place between economics and spirituality.

Reciprocity is, quite simply, the only way to hand down to our children a world conducive to life.

Reciprocity is the bottom line for survival.

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Reciprocity

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Fantastic mounds of rock look like toes or fingers or mushrooms or just about anything else you can imagine.

The neighborhood sits right next to a Rails-to-Trails throughway where you can hike for miles. We scampered up and up to catch the last rays of the sun. On the way we played with our shadows to make living rock art. That’s Joan on the left, me on the right, and Marna offstage taking the photo:

The trees cast their own shadows as the rays of the sun lengthened and color deepened:

I’m a sucker for abstract art, and I couldn’t tear my eyes from the granite walls next to me, their shadowed shades softening to pinks, grays, and blues, painted with aqua lichen:

A chink in the rock showed bright sunset beyond:

Granite walls traced the eons-long pathways of water:

Finally, a tree at the top caught the last rays of setting sun:

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Granite Dells

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An hour later the snow turned to rain, and it rained—and rained and rained—the whole day. Heavy, driving rain. Rain that soaked you the instant you stepped out in it. Rain that collected as three inches of slush on the ground. I didn’t stay outside long enough to get photos of the raging creeks. Too bad. They were spectacular. And dangerous. A six-year-old boy apparently drowned some miles away.

The rain of course melted most of the snow—until evening, when it turned to snow again and snowed all day Friday. Here is Butte Creek, usually a dry wash or a trickle running behind the campus. Not this weekend. Friday it was inches below Sheldon Street:

Today, Saturday, the sun is threatening to shine, and patches of blue decorate the sky. I took a walk this morning, relieved at last not to have rain or snow pelting my face.

Butte Creek is flowing strong but is down some inches from yesterday. The place is beautiful!

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Snow in Prescott

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The most striking finding is that GE [genetically engineered] crops have been
responsible for an increase of 383 million pounds of herbicide use in the U.S. over the first 13 years of commercial use of GE crops.

In the earliest years of GMOs, pesticide use did go down. (Pesticides means all chemicals used to control insects, weeds, and fungi.)

But then something happened. Plants wised up—specifically, the plants farmers didn’t want in their fields, otherwise known as weeds. Weedy plants developed resistance to herbicides.

We might have guessed it would happen. With the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, we watched evolution take place among bacteria. With herbicide-resistant weeds, we are watching plants adapt to their environments—and emerge stronger than before.

The herbicide to which plants have developed resistance is glyphosate, known more famously as Roundup. Today glyphosate-resistant (GR) weeds are threatening whole swaths of cotton, soybeans, and corn throughout the Midwest and South.

GR [glyphosate-resistant] weeds were practically unknown before the introduction of RR [Roundup-Ready] crops in 1996. Today, nine or more GR weeds collectively infest millions of acres of U.S. cropland.

The principal strategy farmers are using in the face of this new threat is—guess what—more herbicide. Which is why herbicide use is rising:

But in some places the weeds are so invasive that farmers have resorted to hoeing them by hand. Here is a photo of workers tackling Palmer amaranth in a GMO-planted cotton field:

Photo by Brad Luttrell (www. bradluttrell.com)

If there is a bright spot in this report, it is that more farmers are looking for “conventional,” non-GMO, seeds to plant in the face of this alarming development. But not a lot of farmers. The number of acres planted to herbicide-tolerant soybeans dropped by only 1 percent last year and is expected to drop only a couple of percentage points in 2010. One problem is that the supply of conventional seeds has shrunk so drastically that for the coming few years farmers will have no choice but to plant genetically engineered ones.

And one or two percentage points is indeed very small, given that 90 percent of the soybeans and most of the cotton grown in this country are herbicide-tolerant crops, as the following graph from the report shows.

What can you do?

• Buy organic! The organic label means no GMOs allowed. The most direct way to register your vote for healthy soil, healthy animals, and healthy people is to buy organic foods.
• Educate yourself on GMO-related issues. The Organic & Non-GMO Report website is a good place to start.
• Read food labels. If 90 percent of soybeans are herbicide resistant, that means your “healthy” soy-based foods, such as tofu and soymilk, are now almost all GMO based. But all kinds of other foods also contain GMO-based soy, especially in the form of soy lecithin, an emulsifier. Soy lecithin appears in, for example, my favorite Celestial Seasonings herb teas.
• Become a soil advocate. GMO (herbicide-resistant) crops are changing soil biology, according to a microbiologist with the USDA. I will be happy to post a guest blog from anyone (especially a student) who writes a decent report on GMOs, pesticides, and soil health.

For more information:

• The report: “The Impacts of GE Crops on Pesticide Use” (PDF)
• The Organic Center blog post about the report
• The Organic & Non-GMO Report website
• “Scientist finding many negative impacts of Roundup Ready GM crops”

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Do GMOs reduce pesticide use?

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A ground-breaking study in the International Journal of Biological Studies links three common varieties of Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) corn to liver and kidney toxicity and clearly illustrates the need for independent research on GMOs’ health effects. As noted by Scientific American and a host of other observers, agricultural biotechnology firms consistently suppress or render impossible independent scientific studies by hiding behind patent law. This study — conducted by French university scientists — is a meta-analysis of studies conducted by Monsanto and another biotech firm, which comes to a different conclusion and calls into question the adequacy of Monsanto’s research methodology. Specifically, this study looks at sex-differentiated effects and non-linear dose response curves whereas Monsanto did not. Monsanto has issued a response to the study, to which one of the lead authors, Gilles-Eric Séralini in turn responded, “Our study contradicts Monsanto conclusions because Monsanto systematically neglects significant health effects in mammals that are different in males and females eating GMOs, or not proportional to the dose.” Originally, published in mid-December, the study has recently garnered coverage in Huffington Post, Grist and Twilight Earth, among other outlets.

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

GMO corn causes organ damage in mammals

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But because storytelling requires language, and because until recently Western humans thought we were the only animals who had language, we also thought that we were the only storytellers.

Now the picture is getting more complex.

Recent scientific studies with animals from monkeys to parrots indicate language use that satisfies all but die-hard linguists. Koko the gorilla is perhaps the most famous for using sign language, and Alex the grey parrot, on the night before he died in 2007, told his trainer, “See you tomorrow. Be good. I love you.”

This week the Times reported on the work of Klaus Zuberbühler, a psychologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, who studies the utterances of monkeys. He finds that Campbell’s monkeys string different calls together to make new meanings. For example, one call means “come to me,” but when followed by a different call, it means, “falling timber!”

If that’s not a story, it’s at least the start of one.

Dr. Zuberbühler has observed a similar achievement among putty-nosed monkeys that combine their “pyow” call (warning of a leopard) with their “hack” call (warning of a crowned eagle) into a sequence that means “Let’s get out of here in a real hurry.”

I feel cheered when I read about researchers like Dr. Zuberbühler, who is able to understand nuances of animal communication because he is willing to go beyond worn-out assertions about what other animals are and are not capable of. It’s a matter of training ourselves to perceive as other animals do, to pay close attention—to notice things to which we were previously blind, or deaf.

In our experience time and again, it’s a humbling experience to realize there is so much more information being passed in ways which hadn’t been noticed before.

Of course, Indigenous peoples have never thought otherwise. Carol Lee Sanchez, of the Laguna Pueblo, wrote in 1993 in what have become some of my all-time favorite words:

There are trees and grasses and flowers and birds and ants and bees waiting for you … to say hello to them—to call them sister, brother, cousin, or friend. They are your relatives; they hear your thoughts as you travel around your town or city.

With the complex social systems of most other animals, you have to think they are communicating in ways many humans just don’t recognize. Hearing thoughts, sending images, appearing in dreams—the repertoire of animal communication is broad, say Indigenous folks.

And speaking of dreams, I have to think of Bodhi when he sleeps. In his dreams he chases deer or maybe foxes—all the animals he’s not allowed to chase in daytime. His paws thrash, his eyes dart back and forth. He grunts in the dream version of barking.

I have no doubt he’s telling stories, if only to himself.

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Do animals tell stories?

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Here is the way our retreat room greeted us on Friday afternoon:

The retreat was held a couple hours south of Boulder, at the Benet Pines Monastery, a community of Benedictine women. On Saturday morning I went for a walk as the sun was beginning to lighten the tips of the trees. Birds were stretching their morning wings, and though I caught glimpses of them, I couldn’t identify any except for the “dee-dee-dee” of the black-capped chickadee.

The ponderosas were peaceful and present. I’d set aside the weekend as the perfect opportunity to sit with the next chapter of the book I’m working on, see if I could find a path through the images.

Chapters don’t arrange themselves when you think they should. I sat. I dabbled in words. I waited. I tensed.

Walking between the retreat room and my quarters, I asked the trees, “What do I do now?”

I heard, “Don’t sweat it.”

So I picked up my camera and went scouting instead. Never can resist a photo of tree bark:

It wasn’t until late in the weekend that a bit of clarity about the chapter began to trickle in, slowly and gently, like the light at the tips of those ponderosas.

I am grateful to our writing teachers, Sandra Dorr and Marilyn Krysl, for their exquisite readings and their enthusiasm for each person’s work; and to Suzi, our yoga teacher, for core-strength exercises fit for a football team and for a warm herbal foot bath and massage that left my feet tingling in minty pleasure.

Post from: this lively earth
Copyright 2009 Priscilla Stuckey

Scenes from a writing weekend

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